Make no mistake about it movie fans, this situation is 100% all Warner Bros fault.
As most of you know, the new movie Watchmen is scheduled to be released by Warner Bros. on March 6th and people are going crazy about it. I’m one of them. But some time ago news came out that Fox Studios was suing WB claiming that the rights to Watchmen still belongs to them. A lot of people thought nothing would come of that… until last week when a judge ruled that yes indeed… the rights to Watchmen still belong (at least in part) to Fox. Yikes!!!!
Now with that established, Fox is asking a judge to prevent WB from releasing Watchmen until the issues are settled. Guess what… I think they’ll win.
What’s even worse, it seems that a lawyer for WB doesn’t think there will be a settlement and that the film will indeed get delayed. The folks over at ComingSoon give us this:
U.S. District Court Judge Gary Feess last week agreed with Fox that Warner Bros. had infringed its copyright by developing and shooting the film, scheduled for release March 6. Feess said Monday he plans to hold a trial Jan. 20 to decide remaining issues. Fox claims it never fully relinquished story rights from its deal made in the late 1980s, and sued Warner Bros. in February. Warner Bros. contended Fox isn’t entitled to distribution. Warner Bros.’ attorney said Monday he didn’t know if an appeal was coming, but thinks a trial is necessary and a settlement unlikely.
Ok… I know that none of you want to hear this… but this is the truth. Fox is right, and this is all WB’s fault.
If the rights belong to Fox, then WB had no business making the film without an agreement with Fox, and I have been told by a very reliable source that Fox DID INDEED communicate with WB about this a LONG TIME AGO and WB basically ignored them.
I used to work in in law… and when someone was going to do something as simple as buy a house, they hired a lawyer to investigate the house to make damn sure all the rights to the property was rightfully being transfered. Why the hell didn’t WB so this with a multimillion movie rights deal?!?!?!
The bottom line is this. If the rights belong to Fox, then they have every single legal, moral and ethical right to step in. It totally sucks… but it’s the truth. If you’re a film fan and you’re mad about this… be mad at WB, not Fox.
All I gotta say is…(censored!)! I hate them!
Why did Fox wait until WB finished the film and started marketing it?
lets be real people if this movie had looked like shit fox wouldve sat on their hands and let it blow up in warner bros faces but of course since the movie looks like its gonna be awesome fox steps forward and says hey x files sucked ass lets try and cash in on this baby y did fox wait until THE MOVIE WAS DONE to make noise about this?
Fox should just take control of the film arleady and release it, UNCUT. But they probably won’t.
Kiss and make up already dammit. I want to see this movie asap.
@John
Good point – I’m not exactly versed in “legalese.” :-)
I think both sides are just posturing with the intention of trying to get the best deal they can by looking like they’re not going to back down.
Vic
Hey Vic,
That’s probably because he’s now totally irrelevant to the proceedings at this point.
WB may want to file some legal action against him at some point to force him to indemnify them for any losses they suffer as a result… but as far as this case goes, he’s not relevant.
Fox owns rights. WB think they own the rights. How they came to believe that isn’t relevant at the moment.
BTW, you guys might get a kick out of this before it gets pulled down:
http://twitter.com/foxmovies
:-P
Vic
What’s interesting is that AFAIK Gordon hasn’t been mentioned anywhere in regards to this whole legal debacle…
Vic
After reading the Screenrant article, I take back all things I’ve said about Fox. I’ll throw the blame on Lawrence Gordon, not Warner of Fox. Yes Warner was dumb for doing things the wrong way, but through the article, we can clearly see Lawrence Gordon is at the origins of this legal fiasco.
Thank you Screen Rant for the run down.
Sounds like the Gordon guy is the root of all this, HOPEFULLY both sides will come to their senses, settle down, talk, and release the movie on time, and cut out Gordon as much as possible, because the longer they keep it on the shelf the more likely bootleg copies will start appearing, and that just hurts the bottom line of what looks like an amazing movie…
-sigh- I saw this coming. Damn it, WB, I think you need new lawyers because they really dropped the ball on this one. Or perhaps an exec thought they were bigger than Fox. Snyder and crew have to be feeling extremely disappointed over this whole mess.
EDWIN
he is a very lame, unknown west coast avenger. the guys blue pink and purple and he talks like the silver surfer
and im sure marvel would sue if DC makes a KANG movie even if he IS lame and unknown…so why try WATCHMEN?????
Poor WB, another reason why they delayed Harry Potter to 09 so they have at least one blockbuster for sure.
Somewhere Alan Moore is laughing his ass off and taunting every person that questioned him as to why he never wanted to deal with Hollywood or see his stories made into movies.
This situation reminds me of a “Entourage” episode where a movie the guys wanted to make really bad was bought up by a studio head that had a grudge against them, after purchasing the rights and the script he threw it on the shelf just to piss them off.
@jaffahut
You’re welcome. :-)
Vic
The more I find out the more my original thesis proves accurate. I said it once, I’ll say it again. Strong> Was there a possibility of having a co-production of two studios? All of this could have been avoided .
Someone up there mentioned Spider-Man. After three films, I have yet to see the other studios, big and small, who had tried for years to have Spider-Man on the big screen, come up to Sony and say ‘Guess what?’
@HAZMAT
Be sure to put a hyphen in when you look up Spider-Man
Don’t contracts expire after some time when nothing is done with them and fall back to the original owner?
Haha, Tom you’re so right.
Reading that article at screenrant.com put so much sence to this whole things. If anyone from there is reading this, thanks for it!
At first it felt like Fox was keeping it quiet and then threw in a wild card. Fits their ‘profile’ they have in the fanboys’ eyes, since they’ve done a few big screw ups in the past.
Now, I don’t even care who wraps all the money out of this movie. I just hope that those, who put alot of time and effort to this project get what they deserve!
It was never as black and white as Fox owning the rights outright, although the technicality was something the WB lawyers should have picked up easily if they had bothered to look. That’s the way I saw it anyway.
Hating fox is so much easier and so much more satisfying…
It seem that the only thing WB has done to make film fans happy is release The Dark Knight. First the Harry Potter switch and now this. Come on WB.
regardless of all the delays and lawsuits…is there really any chance that this film will never be released? Would I be correct to assume that there is too much money to be made with Watchmen, even if the profits are split up?
Kang who?
but id be fucking retarded to call it “oreo”
i just dont get how they didnt see this lawsuit coming from a mile away…i mean watchmen is BIG…its not some unknown superhero like…kang or something….
Hazmat thats really funny. oh and if you found the cure to cancer you could call it what ever the hell you wanted too.
If you wrote a grate story and fox payed you thirty thousand for for it and also let you have a percentage of the profit when released in theaters but they never did than a wb goes out makes the film you dont see any money from wb how are you going to feel. would you be happy if a story you wrote got made into a film and you didnt get credit? or would you rather it not get made for thirty years and get credit money and maybe a job later? this is stealing some one else’s work sure the guy who og did not write the watchman wrote the screen play for wb and the og is not getting payed for this film but he sold the writes to fox not wb so what gives them the write to do this? oh cause we want film of our favorite comic book fuck no. there is no exception for stealing unless it saves a life.
oh and i wish did not happen too.
and it is fucked up that Snyder and the cast are getting fucked on this because this film could make alot of actors huge stars over night…maybe.
What’s driving me nuts about this whole fiasco is the whole “they weren’t using it” mentality. Not using something doesn’t mean you forfeit ownership.
Heck, I’m not using a bunch of the old stuff in the basement, but I’ll still call the cops if anyone tries to steal it.
bt wme and my dad (hes a director) made a movie named spiderman and its about a guy who has superpowers related to spiders…like shooting webs and sticking to walls. its already done but were going to google “spiderman” to see if its not taken..we dont want to get sued…although its too late now, weve already sold so many copies…but just for funzies im going to wiki spiderman
wait a minute
this is fucking retarded…
how did WBs overlook this?? WBs is retarded anyway you look at it
either
1) they thought fox wouldnt be smart enough and over look the fact that youre making a movie about a book that THEY own
or
2) they didnt know that fox owned watchmen…which i know is retarded but….number one is too!!
did they honestly think they could make a movie about watchmen if fox owned it, and NOT get sued???
is this NOT like me finding something awesome like the cure for cancer and naming it “COCA COLA” hoping that coke wouldn’t sue me? or even worse, not knowing or expecting to get sued after doing that?
how did this happen? fox owns it PERIOD, you cant just make a movie about something that you dont own…..i really dont understand how so many people (how many people does it make to make a movie?) can overlook this and not ONE of them raise their hand while they were filming a scene of the movie and say “uh…question- doesnt fox own watchmen? should we be doing this?”
Oops, messed up. Meant to say that I think Gordon was probably instrumental in causing the confusion between Fox and WB.
Vic
Hey John,
If you want to tackle the legal angle – how could Warner Bros. have conceivably NOT done their due diligence on this? I think the intermediary, Lawrence Gordon.
I documented the entire history of the Watchmen movie project going back to 1987, when Fox first acquired the rights here:
http://screenrant.com/watchmen-movie-delay-fox-studio-fault-vic-3576/
Vic
I know your right, its just a very hard pill to swallow considering that if Fox had made the film, (according to some of the early rumblings about the project awhile back.) it would very likely have been much worst. I did not mean for my first posts to be argumentative, I’m actually a long time fan.
Hey Uberbarrett
I have to respectfully disagree about your thought here on Artistic integrity. A situation where a multibillion dollar company (WB) wrongfully went and made a movie they didn’t have the right to make in the hopes of making hundreds of millions of dollars profit has nothing to do with Artistic Integrity.
You and I would do the exact same thing Fox did, because the rights to Watchmen belong to them, not WB. And since it belongs to them, they can wait 200 years to make the movie if they wish. If WB wanted to make it, they should have properly bought the rights.
Not sure about the next DVD commentary actually. I’ll keep you updated.
I totally agree with you on the Legal side of things. I just feel that there is also a matter of artistic integrity that should be at play here. And I also think that Fox will be losing far more cash from lost fan-boys than they would gain through this pursuit. But again, your right, Legally WB sucks. (by the way, when are you guys going to do another dvd commentary?)
Hey Uberbarrett,
I sympathize with your frustration… but how is Fox to “blame” for this exactly?
It belongs to them. Period. A judge already ruled. It doesn’t matter if they did or didn’t do anything with it.
If WB wanted to make a Watchmen movie, they should have does what everybody elsde has to do… make sure they properly buy and secure the rights before going ahead and making a movie THEY HAD NO RIGHT TO MAKE.
There is no question here. This is not Fox’s fault. It’s 100% WB’s fault.
Fox is to blame. They had their chance to make Watchmen, and they did not do it, nor could they. WB gave the fans what they want and made a respectable adaptation and now Fox wants $$$ for a film that they could not have made. Legally, your right, we should be mad at WB…but artistically (and more importantly) Fox is the destructor. I say they promise Fox all of the ticket sale profits, sign the papers and then release it straight to dvd.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO